Wednesday, February 16, 2011

It was a Muslim day of celebration yesterday. The school with orphanage attached near us processed to the mosque on the beach and did Keralean folk dancing on the way. We hardly ever hear them but last week we did catch faint sounds of what we now know to be them practicing their Kolkali routine. The folk dancing wasn't a million miles different from our Morris Dancing back home, sticks were hit, ribbons fluttered, it was very rhythmic, highly patterned and required a lot of concentration from the boys, who were brilliant, not a missed hit amongst them. The younger lads did a dance beating out time on tambourines while doing an elaborate sort of square dance, I thought it was called something like Dhaharamutti but I could be wrong. Maybe its all a form of Kolkali, the dance the older boys were doing.